Review | THE SEATTLE ART FAIR...

Generated on 2022-06-01 04:41:19

Result #1

THE SEATTLE ART FAIR, PRESENTED BY AIG, IS A ONE-OF-A-KIND DESTINATION FOR THE BEST IN MODERN AND CONTEMPORARY ART AND A SHOWCASE FOR THE VIBRANT ARTS COMMUNITY OF THE PACIFIC NORTHWEST. THE FAIR BRINGS TOGETHER THE REGION’S STRONG COLLECTOR BASE; LOCAL, NATIONAL, AND INTERNATIONAL GALLERIES; AREA MUSEUMS AND INSTITUTIONS; AND AN ARRAY OF INNOVATIVE PUBLIC PROGRAMMING. While within this eclectic mix, we can recognize a range of artists who are located and hold. or are situated in New York, Los Angeles, and Paris—notably Gregory Durks, Randy Wrays, Angela De La Cruz, and a slew of others. In this lineup, themes of exploration and communication are imparted to not just those who live outside the country, but those who already inhabit this country. Thus, for example, the inclusion of such heavy hitters as Bette Gordon, Jaren Shapero, and Darren Brown, as well as those who work in New York, is not surprising. This is not an empty sign. On the contrary, what we see here is a very varied and eclectic group of artists who work in all media, including drawing, sculpture, film, performance, installation, and photography. But to us, the shows few leaders are some of the artists depicted in the montages (all works 2000). This is not a tradition of landscape painting, in which the artists are delineated with an apotheosis of brushwork; rather, it is an arena in which the right artist is given the title Hero of His Time.This is not to suggest that there isnt a visual strand running through the work of these thirty-five artists. From the heroic postures of Alfred Jensen and the sweeping projections of Saul Steinberg to the intricate thought bubbles of Robert Longo, the visible-based works often bear an emphatic male presence. This presence is apparent not only in the direct presence of Barbara Bloom, for example, whose paintings and installations recount her personal experiences with Donald Trump (not to mention that young blond in the photograph shes part of) but also in the way that the artists are cited in works that appear to reflect an older generation. For instance, Kristen Stewart is listed as the creator of a range of objects that include a fake but extremely dangerous subway train, a drawstring bag full of pearls, and a yellow mask.

Result #2

THE SEATTLE ART FAIR, PRESENTED BY AIG, IS A ONE-OF-A-KIND DESTINATION FOR THE BEST IN MODERN AND CONTEMPORARY ART AND A SHOWCASE FOR THE VIBRANT ARTS COMMUNITY OF THE PACIFIC NORTHWEST. THE FAIR BRINGS TOGETHER THE REGION’S STRONG COLLECTOR BASE; LOCAL, NATIONAL, AND INTERNATIONAL GALLERIES; AREA MUSEUMS AND INSTITUTIONS; AND AN ARRAY OF INNOVATIVE PUBLIC PROGRAMMING. In the wake of this particular abundance of recent gallery activity, however, the fair was severely tested. The variety of works, most of them significantly integrated into the large-scale, multipart installation of the museum, ran the risk of becoming merely a cause of decor-too-lucency, and the space, the tradition of minimalist sculpture, looked like a crudely rendered rooftop backyard. The curators, however, avoided this danger, and after considerable deliberation, decided to leave two sizable artworks—Bickertons signature Car Crash (South) and Whitney's Spaces, 1961–65, a cubistic transference of the book-board to the wall—as an unadorned rest stop on the way up. The blocks of soil used in this work are made from fiberglass and cast concrete.In the show, the work stands apart: One cannot imagine that Car Crash (South) and Spaces will fit into any kind of museum space; they are intensely intimate, and their stacking is entirely dependent on the viewers own physical inclinations. Car Crash (South) seems to occupy the same room as Whitney's, and, as a large sculpture, Spaces seems to be the most daring of the group, implying that even spaces within the museum itself are capable of new interpretations. Though the curators sought to avoid any fundamental clash of or confrontation between sculpture and installation, these works nonetheless cast a long shadow: They also pointed to the museums identity as a department store, which signifies a literal-minded display of commodities.Car Crash (South) consists of a two-tiered steel pipe suspended from the ceiling and stretching onto the floor, which is the top of a wall that has been painted black and replaced by two glass shelves that rise up into the air. These are closed, so that the contents of the pipes will not be visible. In a quiet register, two long stainless steel sinks pour water into the pipes.

Result #3

THE SEATTLE ART FAIR, PRESENTED BY AIG, IS A ONE-OF-A-KIND DESTINATION FOR THE BEST IN MODERN AND CONTEMPORARY ART AND A SHOWCASE FOR THE VIBRANT ARTS COMMUNITY OF THE PACIFIC NORTHWEST. THE FAIR BRINGS TOGETHER THE REGION’S STRONG COLLECTOR BASE; LOCAL, NATIONAL, AND INTERNATIONAL GALLERIES; AREA MUSEUMS AND INSTITUTIONS; AND AN ARRAY OF INNOVATIVE PUBLIC PROGRAMMING. (This last holds the obvious and necessary implication that museums would inevitably emulate contemporary art if they wanted to.) The edition as a whole amounts to a giant cultural tapestry with the aesthetic stylings of an Adriatic renaissance. For decades, this is not the case. Yet there is something new, something original, that we, as the American city-state of Seattle (spare of splendor and metropolitan one-party dominance) have yet to discover, and we must decide for ourselves whether it is the critical imagination we want to counterbalance the historically arbitrary which-so-and-so-sees-a-poet, or the disassociative post-Rothko interpretations the Romantic imagination has organized itself. Why, then, is Seattle the best city? Or the right city? Or the right thing?The exhibition, curated by Naomi Greenberg, consists of an extensive and lively range of contemporary artists and concerns, not all of whom are in Seattle. The number of artists, in this survey, is unhelpful, because many have shown there only recently—for example, Silvia Kolb, whose work is so alien to the overall mood of the show (Her visit was just too brief, it would seem). However, Seattles selection contains at least three artists who have been in the spotlight here before—the past two years have seen the real strength of the group, which was, before my time, still a local, nonprofessional, and thus already well known. Thus, the presence of a number of older artists is telling, for these artists emphasize the impact of their earlier, almost obscure productions. The strong example of Ralph Humphrey, for example, is there. Humphrey, with his unique brand of photographically oriented expressionism, is the icon of the show. But Humphrey has long been recognized as the most thoroughly assimilated, the most wilfully and energetically of modern sculpture.

Result #4

THE SEATTLE ART FAIR, PRESENTED BY AIG, IS A ONE-OF-A-KIND DESTINATION FOR THE BEST IN MODERN AND CONTEMPORARY ART AND A SHOWCASE FOR THE VIBRANT ARTS COMMUNITY OF THE PACIFIC NORTHWEST. THE FAIR BRINGS TOGETHER THE REGION’S STRONG COLLECTOR BASE; LOCAL, NATIONAL, AND INTERNATIONAL GALLERIES; AREA MUSEUMS AND INSTITUTIONS; AND AN ARRAY OF INNOVATIVE PUBLIC PROGRAMMING.—Paula Kar.RESOLUTIONS FOR WOLF STRATEGICISM: A BRILLIANT PUNISHMENT OF HANDLING—this exhibition offered the perfect occasion to demonstrate, as the title suggested, the contemporary art world—and particularly to reflect on where art finds itself: in a state of constant shifting. Five large-scale works in the main gallery were, for the most part, boardroom-sized, their interior walls a mix of T-shirts, pillowcases, and padded thongs. Overhead, a grid of photo-parencies of affable, beaux arts-y cultural clubgoers gathered around what would normally be an off-the-shelf portable monitor, thus evoking a context where media is, in the long run, no more than a flex pole (always being a subject in itself).Beyond the shows primary physical context, the photographs in the other pieces here conveyed the inscrutable feeling of traveling at night through various spatialities, a sensibility that, at least in part, served to produce the exhibition, which could be seen as an ongoing commentary on photography as a medium, a proxy for all of media, and on all of culture, from avant-garde to modern art. At the same time, these photographs make it clear that the evening on-site setting may be a culturally loaded one, as one immediately encountered Jennifer Bartlett (one of the shows artists), photographer, in the back room of the gallery. Bartlett, like the artist herself, has an extremely private place of work, though its history is public (as if to underscore that, in the long run, the night-party aspect of this particular social gathering is problematic). In this case, its the mix of ritual and public performance, the network of histories with which these photographs would like to suggest a larger network of relationships and connections, that was at issue here.

Result #5

THE SEATTLE ART FAIR, PRESENTED BY AIG, IS A ONE-OF-A-KIND DESTINATION FOR THE BEST IN MODERN AND CONTEMPORARY ART AND A SHOWCASE FOR THE VIBRANT ARTS COMMUNITY OF THE PACIFIC NORTHWEST. THE FAIR BRINGS TOGETHER THE REGION’S STRONG COLLECTOR BASE; LOCAL, NATIONAL, AND INTERNATIONAL GALLERIES; AREA MUSEUMS AND INSTITUTIONS; AND AN ARRAY OF INNOVATIVE PUBLIC PROGRAMMING. And so the strong show found its way through the media ecosystem of Washington, D.C., with its own local contemporary art scenes and a collection of other people who have explored the rich aesthetic and creative possibilities of the emerging alternative art industry. But at the same time, it also contained a rearing of an optimistic, if not sunny, school of Alternative Arts. For some twenty years now, the Alternative Art Institute (AIA) has been working in Washington to promote alternative art and its ways in the public sphere. AIAs website, Avant-garde, is a resource for educational and research purposes, and the shows title, Golden Triangle, is taken from the arch-rivalries in the capital, which mark the departure of the two most powerful states in the country. The museums installation of contemporary art—an excellent mix of cutting-edge artwork and modernist experimenters—was also an attempt to instill that optimism.In Golden Triangle, 1985, Judy Chicago performs in front of a statue of the Big Dipper and Richard Hamiltons response—an installation of various public artworks and portraits of local heroes. The work is based on a combination of artmaking, nonart, and performance. Presented as a kind of oversized teddy bear, with a head shaped like a giant love letter, and dressed in heavy denim, Chicago is a person to be seen in action and who has made art and public space her own. Hamiltons Rube Goldberg contraptions—marbleized wire mesh tanks filled with mud, rubber, and glass—are a reference to the dirty fossil fuels of the 20th century, and are pieces of art that perpetually underwater. With their multiple identities, Hamiltons contraptions reflect a new philosophy of the world as both organic and inorganic.